Uni in the Morning, and other short stories
by guyw1tn0nam3
Summary: A collection of short stories and drabbles centered on untouched aspects of Republic City. Now featuring: Uni in the Morning: You are a child, a street urchin in Republic City. But even street urchins know how to survive in style. An experiment with the second person!


**A/N: **I started a collection of short stories about minor characters/theory crafting in ATLA that I would like to use in a longer story but just don't have the inspiration/time to do so. This series is kind of the same thing. I hope to try to write some experimental stuff centering around non-main characters that expands the Avatar universe.

Anyway, this is an experimental style using the 2nd person. Feel free to hate it all you want because I'm pretty sure I did it horribly. If you want an example of a godtier novel that does this, read Italo Calvino's _If on a winter's night a traveler._

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**Uni in the Morning**

As a street urchin, there are two ways to live your life, and it's a choice between complacency and ambition, but since you have no ambition we'll just talk about the first. Only briefly though. You have little time to hear too many details.

The first.

You sit back. Relax for the better part of the day on your makeshift stool next to a half painted cement wall. Some of the kids smoke pipes trying to look older but you're not like that. You like breathing air. You also would like to read a discarded book from the nearby wooden trash bins that litter the dim lit alley you live in. There are many around. You even rummaged around a few times, searching through caverns of juicy half eaten apples and stained but still pawn worthy jewelry discarded by rich men for anything good, but nothing really catches your interest. There were a few volumes of some high level textbooks, but since you can't read so well, you could only make out its title as a slur of random phonetic sounds. So you ended up using _'Chilled Povairtie and Ho To End It' _as a makeshift stool.

You wake up every morning on the floor, lying on a set of rails where the tunnels below are breathing sticky hot air over your body as the subway rolls slowly by. Stretch. Take a look around. No need to be on alert for danger. You notice as always that many of the children sleep on similar metal rails, but some of them jump into trashcans and use whatever is inside as a partially living blanket. Then, like many of the other children whose faces are painted with crusty mud and wear clothes that looked like they had been half inserted in a shredder, you go to the corner of the street where your dimly lit alley meets a wide street.

You and the other children of Dimlit Alley call this wide street the King's Buffet. It's a back alley where the backdoors of all the restaurants on the street are at. You know there's a particular time window on these things. When the a pair of arrows hammered into a large flat circle at the top of a tower both strike the bottom of the machine, you have until the longer arrow swings a half circle to beg around for food. That tower sits just a few streets away from Dimlit Alley, but you're not allowed there, just like the other children. You have tried, of course, but every time you've been dragged away or scolded by someone older than you.

Before you eat, you must wash. At the far end of the King's Buffet, there's a very nice garden that's owned by an old lady at the back end of the King's Buffet. It's the only place that looks _and _smells good on this wide street. The rest of the street is littered with black soot, grease and oil leaking from some tubes that swerve up and over the tops of the red buildings, the doors made not of the elegant wooden frames that you see near the tall tower but of metal gates and wooden bars that have been scratched at many times. You know. You have a few bloody nails to prove it when you tried to get food before time was up.

The old woman comes out and brings out a long tube. Long ago, that tube was wound about another metal tube stuck into her wall, but because you played around with it so much she took it away. Something about bills. You think she's talking about duck bills. Today, though, you give her a bright smile. You widen it a bit more than usual, and you feel like your jaw hurts a bit. That's right; you don't brush your teeth a lot. There's this wooden stick you keep in your back pocket and you wash that too every day. It's a little thinner than your pinky and it's point is kind of sharp, like when you rip your nails to keep them short and there's still a little joint sticking out.

You use that stick to pick at your teeth, but every once in a while when the sun shines brightly in the middle of the day the water can sometimes be clear enough for you to see that your teeth are still really yellow after all that picking. You can't think of a good reason why, but it doesn't bother you until you smile. So you just don't smile. It's not a big deal. You know it helps sometimes too.

The old lady looks over you and some of the other children who have gathered around. She shakes her head two times. You count. Then, she lifts the tube over everyone's head and rain begins to fall. You dance around for a little bit, making sure you catch as many little droplets as you can. After a while though, when you smell a bit less funny and your mouth and face are a bit smoother, you start dancing with some of the kids just for fun. No one else really likes the dancing though, so most of the time you boogy by yourself.

After the water has stopped it's every child for themselves. You watch the other children scurry away to different doors, knocking and yelling and kicking and screaming. Sometimes you hear a chant, a band of kids grouping around some of the larger gates and pounding their feet and the door as they chant together, their voices echoing across the alleyway, their hands and feet bouncing up and down in rhythm. They experiment with different combinations of sounds, as if to see which one might summon the chefs faster.

You have resorted to a common but effective method. You go to the doors that are never touched. One may say that the other children merely disliked those places and you were the odd one out. You don't think that way. You think this is the smartest way. You get the most food to yourself. If no one else likes it then you'll be the only one to have it, and it's even better if you like it yourself. You also get the title of being different from the rest. Because you know that's important. It will be important one day.

You wait. Sometimes very shortly, other times for very long, drawn out periods of time. The chefs who come out know you, and you know them. You greet them as they come up, sometimes shaking their hands with respect. Other times you put on a sad face and wink at them. Sometimes you tell them the latest jokes, or you ask them what new meals they have made. You know that the taste of a child is of value. What family doesn't have a child? And if a family has a child, why leave him or her at home? More mouths at a restaurant means more money.

You know this, and so you ask for their tests, their experimental cuisine, sometimes so rich in flavor that you don't need to eat for another day. They are sometimes the most amazing of dishes, artfully crafted from the most exotic vegetables and meats, cut into intricate pieces that create silly looking objects that circle around the most beautiful ceramic dishes prepared exactly to your choosing. Toys, castles, soldiers, words that you don't understand. The other children look at you as if you are crazy, but you know you are the gourmet. You are the real head chef of these restaurants, picking and choosing what a three year old may place into his fat mouth and choosing what will stay with you, a onetime meal that you will cry to the heavens and only want you to ever savor such a spiritually enlightening taste.

Even the worst of foods you are not so quick to dismiss. You chew them thoughtfully, the chefs looking at you with interest. You know not to make any sour looks, or to avert your eyes anywhere but to the food. You do not pinch your nose at some of the most horrid of smells from recipes so poorly concocted. You briefly, in what vocabulary that you have, explain to them that the dish is unique and interesting but it lacks a strong presence that would make it a worthy dish of a restaurant of its caliber. Sometimes, you lead them on, that there are subtleties that if only sprinkled, a little ginger perhaps, or more soy sauce, pepper, lettuce, onion, mushroom, would make the dish the finest of all. Of course, you don't know that these restaurants are nowhere close to the high class cuisines that are sprawled close to the inner city, but what does that matter to you? You've never been there? You only have been in Dimlit Alley and The King's Buffet. The exquisite tastes that stick to your tongue or melt in your mouth are all that you know.

You also never go to the same restaurant the same every week. You are the reviewer, the health inspector, and too many and they will suspect you are desperate for their food. That they are your favorites. They would cut you less, their pity only knowing so many boundaries. They will forget you are an asset. After all, why listen to a poor child? Because you understand, that's why. You have proven yourself. They know you know, for they have sold to children and they have loved it. But the moment you seek reliance on their food and they know you have become biased. Partiality is dangerous for you. You must resist temptation.

The rest of the day passes as I have mentioned before. You sit on your stool with a day's worth of food. No one will eat your food anyway. They are too scared at the weird shapes and forms you have requested from the chefs precisely to ward away any children who may slobber all over your precious lunch and dinners. You rummage for books a little, but you seem content with what collection you have. There are other more ambitious children who run away from Dimlit Alley for the better part of the day. You know a twelve year old who works for a lot of the gangs around the city, but even he comes back and joins you and the other children in this alley when the day is over.

When night falls there's almost no light, so you can't even read books, not that you were reading them to begin with. You merely spent the day planning out the next day's meals. What you would like. How you would request them. What would you say. After all, you were the life of a complacent street urchin. You needed to plan out your relaxing day accordingly.

And even a complacent one needs to work hard.

_Fin_


End file.
